rAinbow, a chatbot that addresses the challenge of gender-based violence, has won the Southern African leg of the global Innovating Justice Challenge.
HiiL is a social enterprise devoted to user-friendly justice, and its Justice Accelerator grows and scales justice innovations to reach more people.
The annual Innovating Justice Challenge is used to identify innovations for the accelerator, and takes place in Johannesburg as well as Kampala, Kyiv, Lagos and Nairobi.
At the recent Southern African regional final, AI for Good emerged the overall winner for rAinbow, which is a chatbot that guides women who believe they may be in an abusive relationship through a non-judgemental conversation to better understand their situation and lead them to help.
“Winning the regional final of the HiiL Justice Accelerator Challenge has meant so much to us as a team,” said Kriti Sharma, founder of AI for Good. “rAInbow is one year old and this strategic partnership opportunity has come at the perfect time – we’re ready for our next growth phase and will continue to work hard to make the chatbot smarter and to provide victims of domestic violence with a solution that they actually want.”
Zimbabwean startup LawBasket, which provides affordable legal cover for small businesses, came second, while third place went to for the children’s sake, which offers pro bono mediation services for families at the Wynberg magistrate’s court in Cape Town.
All three innovations will enter the Justice Accelerator programme and receive funding and support to grow their work and impact. rAInbow and LawBasket will be invited to the Justice Entrepreneurship School and Innovating Justice Forum, which take place in The Hague next February.
